YMMV / Twitch Plays Pokémon: Arena

• Adaptation Displacement: Ever since Arena evolved to share its own time-slot on the stream in-between runs after Pokemon X, those who joined the stream during the intermissions were mostly unaware of the main runs or believed TPP has turned into a Pokemon SaltyBet stream. Others found the Arena portion of the stream more enjoyable than the main runs themselves. This became more prevalent during Twitch Plays Touhoumon & Moemon, when Version 1.1 brought in a large amount of newcomers and regulars to the stream, as most of the chat were insistent on finishing both games quickly so they can go back to betting again.
• Adorkable: Some of the Mob has admitted to finding the PBR announcer "awkwardly endearing".
• Archive Panic: As to be expected from a 24/7 stream with a new battle every few minutes, trying to find a match you may have missed is an exercise in futility.
• Broken Base:
  • While the intermission length was sort of a discussion ever since Version 0, some players became baffled when the streamer made Arena be played for 77 days between Alpha Sapphire and XD: Gale of Darkness and then confirming that four main runs will be played per year with the rest resorting to Arena. It became of an issue for some players on how much emphasis Arena is getting than the main runs, with arguments from both sides starting on how much can the intermission and main runs be played per year, specifically emphasizing on potential short runs.
  • Having Random or Fixed Order before a battle starts. Some say Fixed Order makes battles predictable and boring while others say Random Order has a chance of giving an unfair advantage to the opposing team. This is mostly surfaced after PBR made its debut, where it currently has Fixed Order rather than Random Order which Pokemon Stadium 2 had.
  • The idea of removing or keeping the fog in Courtyard Colosseum. People have varying opinions on this weather hazard (see That One Level below) whether it makes the battles more interesting or frustrating.
  • The intermission in general pits itself in two different discussions: A) Whether Pokemon/Smash betting alongside the main runs is a good idea or not and B) The length of the intermission between runs.
  • Metronome matches. A constant source of RNG amusement, or a boring waste of tokens that stopped being funny after the first three times, in addition to often outbidding more original matches?
• Ensemble Dark Horse: The announcers.
• Game-Breaker: Any Smash fighter who had little to no nerfs (i.e. not CPU Lvl. 9) were typically the go to fighter to bet on, especially during the second nerf wave as few were given an even lower CPU level.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Notoriety is given for those who make matches that seem original, but others have already done it many times before. This includes matches such as Eeveelutions, Starters, Legendaries, and Metronome/Explosion, to name a few.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • Surprisingly, despite the main runs being the draw of TPP, there are a lot of people who only come to it or join for the arena intermissions, with quite a few mainstream users in Arena disappearing when a main run starts. It's gotten to the point where some people suggest Arena should be its own Twitch channel separate from the main channel, so people can bet and play in their own chat while the others are playing the runs. Them and the addition to the number of people who are in the main runs but just want to get back to Arena as soon as possible are starting to make others worry that Arena is starting to take away from the main focus of TPP, that being the actual game runs.
  • Some have theorized that such people kept the viewer count from dropping during the Nintendo DS games thanks to Stadium Betting being played simultaneously to the main runs, which also alleviates any boredom during the grinding sessions.
  • Going even further, for the some who joined Arena during Version 1.1, they mostly come in for the Pokemon Vietnamese Crystal subgame.
• Memetic Loser:
  • Entei, Deoxys, and Darkrai are the main ones in PBR. Their win rates are absolutely terrible, which quickly got them a reputation for "Never bet on 'X'!" when they appear in the stream. On a lesser note, most Pokemon with self KO moves that don't really do much thanks to the fact you can't switch Pokemon follow not far behind the three above, but at least hold up better since they often have good moves and power to back it up, essentially being down to RNG whether they preform well or not.
  • In the Smash 4 intermissions, Fox quickly developed this due to his absolutely terrible win rate, often being the first one KO'd in most matches. Many have compared him to being Smash's Entei.
• More Popular Spin Off: Arena has quickly grown to this status in comparison to the main runs, as the above tropes have stated, with a vast portion of the chat mostly consisting of PBR regulars these days. It's been getting quite some flank for this from the old guard from the pure TPP runs of early days, especially during the Twitch Plays Touhoumon & Moemon run, as many during that run have stated their only reason for doing so is to get back to Arena quicker. ^Note This may be a case of Mis-blamed though, as even those who mostly come for the runs and disappear during PBR have admitted that Touhoumon and Moemon are a bit of an Audience-Alienating Era in TPP runs, due to essentially being reskin hacks of a game the mob has played three times at this point, and the duel game gimmick ended up being more annoyingly tedious than the chaotic tug-o-war everyone had hoped for. Naturally, even those who don't play Arena just want to get through it to hopefully get to the next, far more interesting run at this point. Notably, the complaining has died down since Touhou and Moemon ended.
• The Scrappy: Each version of the game has had at least one Pokemon that was widely disliked for causing "cancer" matches, matches that go on for an extremely long time that usually can only be won through stalling. Over the course of several updates, to name a few Pokemon in no particular order: Vaporeon, Milotic, Wobeffet, Seel, Shedinja, Metapod, Kakuna... The list goes on. Generally, a lot of these scrappies rescued with new movesets that lower their stallablity, though a few have also slipped back into this thanks to further moveset updates that push them back into Stone Walls.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • For some, money being the source of altering move probabilities, as a high bidder can throw a match just by being the only one to be present on a move nobody wants, and those with small bids have a hard time catching up to the high choice since they barely skew the game's RNG. Likewise, a low bidder can also be picked (sometimes more than once), with similar results as a richer troll.
  • Version 0's Leaderboard. It was meant to show everyone's standings of whatever money they have while in a five-minute break. The result was a very crowded and slow-moving screen where it was highly difficult to see one's name unless they were in the top spots, the music selection being repetitive and boring, and usually repeated advertisements at the last two minutes. People effectively rejoiced when Version 1.0 speed up the "leaderbored" and Version 1.1.3 made it be integrated with the subgame (ads notwithstanding).
  • Version 1.1's new subgame, a Democracy-only run of Pokemon Vietnamese Crystal, has been met with some criticism regarding it's input mechanic. People can vote only one input per match, unlike actual Democracy Mode in the main runs where inputs can be stacked per voting period (such as a9 or up2left2). For segments that include speech, this means minutes of waiting for a match to be over so people can input "a" for a line of text to be moved.
• Shocking Moments: The entire Smash exploit was so big that players earned large winnings in a matter of minutes (payouts were fixed to three times the amount bid). Before the Streamer reset all balances, implemented a bidding limit, and changed CPU levels, the top two players had balances of over 700 million Pokedollars.
• Special Effect Failure: Due to the usage of emulators (Arena wouldn't be possible without it), any bugs present in the emulators used will appear on stream as well. such as:
  • Pokemon Stadium 2: During attacks, the floor may sometimes disappear. Some Pokemon also seem to lack eyes in certain camera angles.
  • Pokemon Battle Revolution: Due to the streamer running Dolphin with Store EFB Copies to Texture Only enabled likely for the speed boost it offers, Dolphin will frequently overwrite stored textures causing issues. Textures will sometimes appear more basic than it should be (usually circles) and other times are replaced by words. The trainers also have some article of clothing or hair change color in their introduction scenes. The effect errors have been increasingly common once Version 1.1 came out, even going as far as changing one's face. These have since been fixed with the 2.0 update.
• That One Level: Courtyard Colosseum, where occasionally fog will be present which lowers accuracy for a majority of attacking moves. The only area where a gimmick is present, it is a bane/blessing in which one team may have the RNG advantage of hitting all their moves, especially if it's the underdog team. It becomes worse when status effects are present, where the probability of attacking lowers when multiple statuses (e.g. confusion, attraction, and paralysis) stack up.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Whenever certain Pokemon get Nerfed or buffed for balance (especially Memetic Pokemon), expect to hear people complaining about it, or claim it's ruining the fun of PBR.
• Vindicated by History: Subverted. Even though the stream has made multiple awesome and funny moments with Pokemon Battle Revolution, with the exception of the announcer, the game itself is still considered lackluster by many.

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